~ Adventures with the Peace Corps

The wonders of Skype, ICS & English

The first night of fall break, I had the opportunity to facilitate a Skype conversation between about 30 of my students, colleagues, school director and a University of Michigan class we are working with on the Earth Odyssey simulation of the University’s education department’s Interactive Communications & Simulations. Since the start of the simulation in September, all our work has been done online and the students have only communicated via usernames on a private website created for the simulation. Through Skype, we were able to introduce ourselves face-to-face, have real time conversations and best of all, laugh together. It was an awesome experience for me to be a part of and my kids were ecstatic. Some of my girls even dressed in traditional Ukrainian clothes and sang a traditional Ukrainian song.

When we returned from fall break, I asked my students what was their favorite part of the Skype conversation. After exclaiming, “That Americans drink 8 cups of coffee every day”, they simply said, “It was cool because we could speak in English to English speakers and they could understand us! Our studies worked!” This put a huge smile on my face that I don’t think will be gone soon 🙂

Here are two photos from the event. The first is of the University class and the second is my classroom on a computer in Michigan!

Awesome group of ICS at UMich

My students, colleagues, director and I on a computer in Michigan with ICS!

I love technology too, but then such a pain in the butt on the same hand. 🙂 The US class met at 2pm EST so we met at 9pm our time…it was late, but kinda fun to be in school at night and it was worth it in the end.

Ukrainian National Anthem

Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom,
Luck will still smile on us brother-Ukrainians.
Our enemies will die, as the dew does in the sunshine,
and we, too, brothers, we'll live happily in our land.
We'll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom
and we'll prove that we brothers are of Kozak kin.
We'll rise up, brothers, all of us, from the Sain to the Don,
We won't let anyone govern in out motherland.
The Black Sea will smile yet, grandfather Dnipro will rejoice,
Yet in our Ukraine luck will be high.
Our persistence, our sincere toil will prove its rightness,
still our freedom's loud song will spread throughout Ukraine.
It'll reflect upon the Carpathians, will sound through the steppes,
and Ukraine's glory will arise among the people.